


Once Bitten

by Glinda



Category: Neverwhere - Gaiman
Genre: Blood Play, Food Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-09
Updated: 2010-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 19:32:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Old Firm have history, lots and lots of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Bitten

**Author's Note:**

> I do not know where to even begin with the warnings here, other than to say, Croup and Vandemar being Croup and Vandemar? (Torture, eating things that shouldn't be eaten and what may or may not be sex.) Written for the prompt 'Bite' for my claim at overlooked.

Mr Croup enjoys fine china and ceramics. This is an open secret in the circles they move in, not something they feel the need to hide or advertise; just something that simply is. They are the Old Firm and it's been a long time since they've needed to advertise anything. If you're in a position to be able to hire them, you know their price and do not question their quirks. There are those who would mock Mr Croup's preference, sneer at his pretensions towards art and circumlocutory speech, but they soon find that Mr Vandemar takes exception to such attitudes and no one likes to find that Mr Vandemar has eaten their favourite pet.

~

The first time Mr Vandemar encountered his ceramics-consuming colleague, was in Troy before its fall and Mr Croup was torturing his old boss. At the time Mr Croup had favoured Persian ceramics, considering them superior to the courser work produced in Troy, however the ongoing wars with the Greek city-states meant the traders from the south kept away. Unable to pay Mr Croup's fee, Mr Vandemar's boss had had a forgery made and Mr Croup took exception to the taste. Mr Vandemar in turn took exception to the recent discovery that his much-delayed wages were almost half made up of counterfeit currency. His plan for the evening had thus been to remove a few extraneous limbs from his employer, but finding someone else already at work on something far more detailed and painful he was quite content to wait his turn and enjoy watching someone else demonstrating their area of expertise in the meantime.

"I practice tutelary dentistry Mr Vandemar, is that something you have any experience with?"

"Oh indeed sir, oft times Mr Constance here has had me undertake that. Usually I find ripping the head off their second in command, sticking my hand up their neck and pinging the teeth out one by one to be a very effective teaching tool."

Even all these centuries later Mr Vandemar can still recall perfectly the way Mr Croup had looked at him appraisingly at that point, before his mouth had twisted into a predatory, almost vulpine, smile before responding.

"My approach is more…direct you'll find. It does unfortunately involve a great deal of squirming on the pupil's part. I wondered if you might be so kind as to hold him still, too much squirming interferes with my concentration."

"With pleasure Mr…?" Mr Vandemar paused allowing the other man time to interject with his own name before continuing, "Croup. Don't worry, I like it when they squirm."

He recalls perfectly the look of fear in his former employers eyes as he clamped his hands on his shoulders, along with the way Mr Croup's expression had twisted again into something like approval when he looked up and the quiet certainty that they were going to have fun here. The rest is lost to time and darkness, only Constance's screams remaining.

It's another three years before they officially form the partnership that will make them legends, they run into each other a few times between times, occasionally stopping to admire each other's work or lend a well placed hand – or someone else's. Then there is the job that changes everything. A conflagration of legendary proportions is required, and Mr Vandemar is maybe a wee bit tired of his current boss' mockery and presumptions. He knows that if he's going to make this fire truly legend worthy he will need help, someone with more of a brain for plans. Only one name comes to mind.

Mr Croup's plan is good. Troy burns and the fire that consumes it becomes enough of a legend to serve as an effective reference for the best part of the following three thousand years. Some friendships are forged in the fires of adversary; theirs is forged in the fires of fire.

~

Other people find Mr Croup's use of unnecessarily complex words and speech patterns at best irritating and at worst patronising, but Mr Vandemar mostly finds it comforting. One speaking in circles, the other in straight lines, only the most obvious way in which they balance and fit. There are many things that Mr Vandemar doesn't understand. Emotions for a start. However, Mr Croup has a way of explaining things so that they make sense to him. For example, Mr Vandemar does not understand desire. Mr Croup has explained that this is like hunger, except for things other than food. Mr Vandemar regularly eats things most other people would not consider food and has never seen reason to pass judgement on Mr Croup's eating habits. He is aware of 'mechanics' as they say, but as someone always more interested in what lay under a girl's skin than under her clothes, he confines his own 'pleasures of the flesh' to eating and torture.

Over time, under his tutelage Mr Vandemar has come to recognise if not understand certain emotions. Anger is what you feel when someone has cheated you and you're planning to exact a bloody and fitting revenge on them. Fear is what other people feel when Messers Croup and Vandemar catch them. Happiness is the feel of eyeballs popping in his mouth, the scream people make when you rip off their friend's head in front of their eyes, the sound of a Tang figurine disintegrating between Mr Croup's teeth.

Mr Vandemar does not understand love or loneliness; Mr Croup cannot help him with that one, as he is a stranger to those emotions as anything other than a weakness to be exploited in others. In the quiet of his head at night, Mr Vandemar thinks about his life before he had Mr Croup to balance him out and explain the things he doesn't understand about this changing world. Something cold and dark rises up inside him at the thought so he stabs Mr Croup firmly in the head and is lulled to sleep by his disgruntled mutterings about homicidal business partners. Safe in the knowledge that neither of them can die.

Emotions are mostly alien to Mr Vandemar; emotions are almost consuming to Mr Croup. Another way that they balance and fit.

~

Mr Vandemar can remember the first time he realised the extent of Croup's preference for Tang Dynasty pieces.

They'd been in China, during the last days of the Tang dynasty. Well less in China than under it, a labyrinthine crypt to be precise, during a job gone as wrong as could be imagined.

Their erstwhile employer has decided to be rid of them by means of burying them alive. He assures them that they will find their payment three times over in their prison, just never be able to spend it. They calculate that even if no one else seeking their services tracks them down and breaks them out, the seal used on the door will last less than a decade and running out of air isn't exactly a problem for them. A rank amateur they decide.

Mr Vandemar finds Mr Croup standing transfixed in a vast room of porcelain figurines and concludes that between that and the rats at least they won't go hungry. Provide of course that Mr Croup does not gorge himself to death on the veritable banquet in front of him. However, given that he's almost entirely sure that they're mostly immortal these days this would only be a temporary inconvenience rather than a major issue.

(The first time they came to London Below, before there was a London for it to be below, back when it was merely a market and a collection of hovels surrounding the Labyrinth. They'd come to see a druid of considerable renown, who'd removed the black and shrivelled remains of their hearts in return for ridding him of some monks rather insistent on his conversion – the druid didn't believe in the divinity of the creature the monks kept captive, but he did fear its power.)

If they are to be on an enforced holiday from their work, then Mr Vandemar does not see why this should mean they do not get to have some fun and goes looking for a chair and some ropes. To Mr Vandemar the chair is every bit as much a tool for his purposes as the ropes but Mr Croup murmurs compliments about its design as he is tied to it, so Mr Vandemar takes it as an added bonus. He leaves his colleague thus bound for several hours, surrounded by, but unable to touch, the figurines. Mr Vandemar waits until he himself is decidedly hungry before returning. Mr Croup is wild eyed and twitching by the time he returns, the knots he tied were good but not so good that Mr Croup could not have freed himself if he wanted to. Mr Vandemar takes up a position leaning against the plinth in front of Mr Croup, breaks off part of one of the figurine and eats it slowly. The porcelain is dry and sharp in his mouth, almost tasteless, though when he focuses he catches hints of the minerals that he has often heard Mr Croup wax lyrical about it containing. The look on Mr Croup's face as he watches Mr Vandemar eat the figurine is worth every bit of discomfiture from swallowing his mouthful. Breaking off another piece he approaches his, now invective spewing, companion pressing the piece against his mouth to silence him. There is a long moment of silence between them as anger, loathing and desire chase each other across Mr Croup's face before he bites the porcelain viciously out of Mr Vandemar's fingers, swallowing it with a noise of unadulterated pleasure. This is a new game for them, but Mr Vandemar can tell already that it's going to become one of his favourites to play.

A few weeks later, Mr Vandemar wakes to find himself chained to the top of a tomb, Mr Croup leaning over him holding a bleeding and beheaded rat in one hand and wearing a curious expression. Mr Vandemar can feel where some of the rat's blood has dripped on his cheek and is starting to roll down it. He watches Mr Croup watch the droplet's path intently.

"Turnabout is only fair," Mr Croup assures him, before leaning forward and removing all trace of the streak of blood with his tongue.

Mr Vandemar has always held that the pleasures of food were far greater than those of sex. He just never realised how much fun it would be to combine them both.

They do not worry about escape; something will turn up, it always does.

The something turns out to be someone. A Hunter, young, bright and brutal, fresh off the killing of the Beast of Luoyang Below, comes to them as emissary from the Seven Sisters.

Mr Croup will spend the best part of a century seeking this Hunter's true name, aware that she could be a powerful enemy and wishing some leverage for future use. Her name eludes him, it does not appear to be hidden or protected, just absent. No magic guards her steps; as far as they can find she is just very good at staying alive. So when he wakes with Hunter's knife at his throat and her mocking whisper in his ear that 'her mother named her well', he knows enough to leave it be.

Hunter grows into her name and becomes a legend in her own right. It doesn't seem to affect her, other than to steady her steps a little, the only praise she seems to seek is that of Serpentine of the Seven Sisters and even they fear her.

They work with her rarely. She looks down on them for what she sees as their fickleness; they look down on her for her continued fealty to the last of the Seven Sisters. Yet it is always a pleasure to work with another professional, much easier to trust someone's judgement when you already know their price.

~

After the Marquis has left Mr Croup devours the figurine greedily and gracelessly, Mr Vandemar does not attempt to intercede, it has been too long since Mr Croup has been able to indulge his tastes unimpeded. The crunch of the fragile material in the face of Mr Croup's hunger is familiar and stirs fond memories of past triumphs, his unfettered enjoyment of his feast a simple pleasure in these complex times. Besides, the hunger for the chase is upon them both, there will be time enough for shared indulgences later. For now, they have work to do.


End file.
